Painless
by Evandar
Summary: Sequel to Child of Ruin and Hope. Legolas has learned to lie, even to himself. That ability is fading. Mild Legolas/Gimli slash, references to MPreg and non-con


**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Lord of the Rings_ and am making no profit from this story.

**AN:** This is the sequel to 'Child of Ruin and Hope', so if you haven't read that then this probably won't make any sense at all.

* * *

Painless

by Evandar

It is Gimli who sees that he is bleeding. In Legolas' defence, the constant rain soaked his tunic and shirts until they clung to his skin some days ago, and the forces have Saruman have allowed no reprieve long enough for clothing to become a concern; he had also noticed growing difficulty in drawing his bow, but had put it down to fatigue and continued. He hadn't noticed the orc-arrow wedged into his shoulder. The shaft must have snapped off at some point during the battle, but he hadn't noticed – not being shot, or the blood that soaked his sleeve. He had been focussed on draw-aim-release, on counting, and on finding Gimli when his friend vanished from view.

Gimli's wound was his first priority – a gash on the Dwarf's brow that bled profusely – before Gimli's cry of dismay reaches his ears.

"Fool of an Elf, fussing over me when your own wounds are worse," he says. "Sit down and let Aragorn have a look at you."

For a moment, Legolas is baffled. It's only when Gimli, huffing at his confusion and muttering oaths in Khuzdul, points out the blood coating his arm that he realises that yes, he is wounded. He touches the stain with curious fingers and follows it up, over elbow and bicep, to the joint of his shoulder, just beneath his collar bone. There is a hole there, and he pushes his finger in until he can feel the snapped remains of a shaft against his fingertip.

The movement makes the arrow grate against bone, and makes Gimi's eyes widen in something like horror. Legolas looks away from him, hiding his face behind the curtain of his hair. "'Tis little more than a scratch," he says. "The rain has made it appear worse than it is."

…

Legolas has not always been as graceful as he is now. He was an ungainly child: equal parts legs, ears and chaos, and while he is capable now of dancing over narrow ledges, he has not always been. Once, when he was an Elfling, he fell and broke his ankle.

That was what the healers told him, after his tutors had dragged him to their halls when they'd seen his balance was more off than usual. He had been walking on it for three days and hadn't noticed.

That was when his mother had stopped being his mother and had become his King.

…

Gimli is a reassuring warmth against his back as they ride to Isengard. His broad, strong hands rest firmly on Legolas' stomach; thick thumbs are hooked into his belt. Their injuries are treated – Legolas had seen to himself before Aragorn could get to him, and has suffered the Man's curious looks ever since.

He doesn't want his friends to know.

Gimli, he hopes, will pass off his reaction to his injury as another example of Elven strangeness. Legolas has provided him with many, after all, and for all the fondness between them, there is little understanding. Aragorn, however, would know better. Raised in Imladris, he knows that Elves should feel pain – that Legolas does not would trouble him. It is best that he remains in ignorance.

…

Legolas is still young for an Elf, but he is as old as an Age of the world. His memory is long, and for all he acts the fool, little of his life has been happy. He grew up in an ever darkening realm, fighting spiders and orcs to defend his kingdom's borders. He is an only child, but not a beloved one.

He had been once, he reminds himself. Once, Thranduil-King would cradle him in his arms and press kisses to his hair; would teach him his letters and his archery and how to neatly braid his hair. Once, Thranduil had been mother – before his ankle had broken, before they discovered he could not feel pain, before the word mother made Thranduil flinch.

Legolas had tried. He had tried to emulate his mother in all that he could in hopes of regaining his favour again, but none of it had worked. His once-mother is now a king as distant as the stars, and he knows in his heart that he will never regain the affection he lost.

…

He sees the sea for the first time when they emerge from the Paths of the Dead. It is stretched out before them, an endless blue-grey that stretches beyond even his keen sight. Gulls wheel overhead, screaming to each other, and the wind that tangles in his hair brings with it the scent of salt and sorrow.

When Legolas feels wetness on his face, his first thought is that he is somehow bleeding again. He is not. It is tears that linger on his fingertips when he brushes them away, and there is a cold weight in his chest.

He hears Aragorn explaining to Gimli the power that the sea holds over Elves; the call to pass over it to white shores and timeless peace. He doesn't correct the assumption. Instead he fills his ears with the lapping waves and the cries of the gulls, and breathes in the rich scent of brine until his lungs can hold no more. It is only when Gimli reaches for him and places his hand on his lower back and murmurs his name that he turns away.

The sea is one of the most beautiful things he has ever seen, made lovelier by the power it doesn't hold over him. There is no longing to sail West; just a forbidding coldness in his chest and the knowledge that all his creeping suspicions are true.

He is not an Elf, not entirely, and there will be no place for him in Valinor. He places his hand on Gimli's shoulder as they rejoin Aragorn, and he lets his mouth chatter about gulls and tides while grief twists sharply in his chest. He speaks of white shores he will never see, and if his fingers grip too tightly then Gimli doesn't say a word.

…

"Such is the nature of evil. In time all foul things come forth."

Such is the wisdom of Thranduil-King, and such is the wisdom Legolas has grown accustomed to hearing. Thranduil speaks so often, and Legolas listens, trying to catch the smallest hints of fondness as he used to, once, when Thranduil told him tales of Doriath as he tucked him in at night. There are no such hints, and have not been for some three thousand years, but still he listens and he hopes and he tries not to notice when his King's eyes rest on him for a little too long.

He has learned to make his reports to a place just over Thranduil's left shoulder. He has learned not to touch or to hope to be touched; not to ask of his father – "rotting in Emyn Muil, fallen before the Deceiver was vanquished; ask no more of me" – or his grandfather. He has learned to ignore the whispers in his mind that say his teeth are too sharp to belong to an Elf, that his sense of smell is too sensitive and his taste for meat too strong. He has too great a strength and endurance to be natural and neither cut nor broken bone will stop him, and he has learned to hide them.

He has learned that if any Elf could have the strength to linger in Arda after such an atrocity – to not fade; not sail; remain – then it would be Thranduil. He loves his mother, and will not willingly cause him yet more pain.

He has learned to lie, even to himself. That ability is fading.

…

Long before they met, he called Gimli a goblin mutant. He thinks now, with the sea's rejection still thundering in his mind, that he might have been projecting.

…

It is over and the battle is won, and Legolas feels his knees give out as relief floods through him. He sinks to the ground, a distant echo of a clumsy Elfling, and laughs when Gimli turns to him with fear in his gaze. Gimli, dearest and loveliest of his friends, punches him lightly in the arm.

"I thought you struck down," he says, "and yet you laugh. Are all Elves as mad as you?"

There are many things that Legolas could say to such a statement. He settles for "no, and all the better for it," before pressing a kiss to the corner of Gimli's mouth. He gets a mouthful of beard for his efforts, but Gimli's lips are soft and his kiss is returned. It is brief, because there is no real place for love on the field of war, but it ignites something in Legolas' heart – something doused by seawater and blood – and his sudden joy is both wild and inappropriate.

He has not been truly happy for a long time.

…

His mother's hands are gentle as they card through his hair, unfastening braids and slowly loosening the strands. He is speaking softly of Queen Melian and the enchantments she used to keep her husband's kingdom safe. Those same enchantments, weaker for lack of a Maia's power, hold their fortress in Lasgalen safe. His mother had been Queen Melian's apprentice, and Legolas likes to think that he is just as fair and graceful she was.

When his hair is loose and brushed, he settles back into his mother's arms and presses his ear to his chest. His mother's voice is as deep as the caverns they dwell in, and it is fluid and powerful as magic. His mother pauses in his tale long enough to press a kiss to Legolas' head, and when Legolas peers up at him, he thinks he can see stars reflected in his mother's eyes.

His mother and their underground home are the entire world to him. He has seen maps, but their strange names and the things his mother tells him are mountains are meaningless, for there are no such things in Lasgalen.

"You will be good," his mother tells him when he tucks him into bed. There is a strangeness to his voice that makes Legolas frown because it is something he's never heard before. All he knows is that his mother isn't speaking of the archery lessons that will begin in the morning.


End file.
